Wednesday, April 4, 2012

It's Lovely When Things Work "Just Right"!

March 27, I posted about Schmidt's Smooth Yellow, the thornless, yellow polyantha Jackie Schmidt rescued from a 1930's cottage to be torn down in her town. I removed the cuttings from their two week wrap and planted them that date.

This is what greeted me when checking things this morning.

This is a 16 oz. root ball from a foam cup.

The buds are beginning to swell!

It's lovely when things work "just right"! The cuttings arrived March 13. They were potted March 27. Eight days later, a root!

Thank you Connie! Yes, ma'am, I'm excited! I would love to obtain Belmont to compare the two. Good yellow polys are rare. If there are a few unknowns out there, we should make the effort to identify them and get them spread around better.

I hadn't checked your blog for awhile, but am so glad I did today. Your explanations are so thorough and your results so astounding...am going to give it a try again (though I think you have said you get best results in cool weather, so may be too late this year). Thanks for being such a willing teacher!

Thank you! I'm hopeful. Two of the six have small roots to the bottoms of the root balls. One has a new shoot forming. Two are yellowing and developing black areas, so I think they're already history. The final two are just sitting there, which isn't really a bad thing, it just "is".

Thanks, Sally, yes, cooler weather is usually more successful, but I'm wrapping some Xanthina cuttings tomorrow to see if it works with them. The others I'll try striking as has worked with hibiscus. We'll see! I've rooted some Pink Clouds and IXL for root stock for it, too. I'm hedging all bets! Thanks!

It set a small bud, which I pinched off to push it to grow. There are about five sets of leaves and a small basal, so I'm hoping to push it into developing into a decent plant before permitting it to flower.